armed force, and to besiege him in his stronghold—­the important city of Medenblik—­which he resolutely held for Leicester, although Leicester had definitely departed, and which he closed against Maurice, although Maurice was the only representative of order and authority within the distracted commonwealth.  And thus civil war had broken out in the little scarcely-organized republic, as if there were not dangers and bloodshed enough impending over it from abroad.  And the civil war was the necessary consequence of the Earl’s departure.

The English forces—­reduced as they were by sickness, famine, and abject poverty—­were but a remnant of the brave and well-seasoned bands which had faced the Spaniards with success on so many battle-fields.

The general who now assumed chief command over them—­by direction of Leicester, subsequently confirmed by the Queen—­was Lord Willoughby.  A daring, splendid dragoon, an honest, chivalrous, and devoted servant of his Queen, a conscientious adherent of Leicester, and a firm believer in his capacity and character, he was, however, not a man of sufficient experience or subtlety to perform the various tasks imposed upon him by the necessities of such a situation.  Quick-witted, even brilliant in intellect, and the bravest of the brave on the battle-field, he was neither a sagacious administrator nor a successful commander.  And he honestly confessed his deficiencies, and disliked the post to which he had been elevated.  He scorned baseness, intrigue, and petty quarrels, and he was impatient of control.  Testy, choleric, and quarrelsome, with a high sense of honour, and a keen perception of insult, very modest and very proud, he was not likely to feed with wholesome appetite upon the unsavoury annoyances which were the daily bread of a chief commander in the Netherlands.  “I ambitiously affect not high titles, but round dealing,” he said; “desiring rather to be a private lance with indifferent reputation, than a colonel-general spotted or defamed with wants.”  He was not the politician to be matched against the unscrupulous and all-accomplished Farnese; and indeed no man better than Willoughby could illustrate the enormous disadvantage under which Englishmen laboured at that epoch in their dealings with Italians and Spaniards.  The profuse indulgence in falsehood which characterized southern statesmanship, was more than a match for English love of truth.  English soldiers and negotiators went naked into a contest with enemies armed in a panoply of lies.  It was an unequal match, as we have already seen, and as we are soon more clearly to see.  How was an English soldier who valued his knightly word—­how were English diplomatists—­among whom one of the most famous—­then a lad of twenty, secretary to Lord Essex in the Netherlands—­had poetically avowed that “simple truth was highest skill,”—­to deal with the thronging Spanish deceits sent northward by the great father of lies who sat in the Escorial?